SAFER: Services and Applications for Emergency Response

Project ID: 218802

Funded under: FP7-SPACE

Duration: 2009.01.01 – 2012.03.01

Coordinator: SPOT IMAGE (SI) SA – France

Participants: Project's partners include companies and institutions from 56 European countries, including ReSAC and National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology from Bulgaria.

SAFER project is part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), a joint initiative of European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme. The main objective is to implement and validate pre-operational versions of the GMES Emergency Response Service.

SAFER project aims at implementing preoperational versions of the Emergency Response Core Service. SAFER will reinforce European capacity to respond to emergency situations: fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, humanitarian crisis. The main goal is the upgrade of the core service and the validation of its performance with 2 priorities:

• First priority is the short term improvement of response when crisis occurs, with the rapid mapping capacity after disastrous events, including the relevant preparatory services (reference maps).
• The second priority is the extension to core service components before and after the crisis.

SAFER includes also some transverse RDT actions, with the objective to increase added-value of the overall service chain. Users’ involvement is a key driver and a specific task addresses the federation of the key users, both for interventions in Europe and outside Europe.

Remote Sensing Application Center – ReSAC participates in the SAFER project and offers two main services related to:

1. Plain flood risk management - involves the preparation of:

• Past flood events maps;
• Flood hazard maps;
• Flood risk maps

2. Assets mapping - includes the preparation of:

• Map of the land cover, the so-called reference map, identification and characterization of the areas with risk and special places
• Mapping of urban areas and distribution of population
• Economic assessment of the types of land use.

The end user of the SAFER services is the Danube River Basin Directorate-Pleven (DRBD), Civil Protection and Executive Agency "Electronic Communication Networks and Information Systems".